Apple may have Google Maps replacement waiting in the wings

Apple has bought a mapping service company called Placebase and its former CEO …

Apple has had a fairly comfortable relationship with Google in the past—CEO Eric Schmidt had a place on Apple's board, Google is the default search for its Safari browser, and Google Maps and YouTube are first-class applications on the iPhone. Apple has even created a maps API that allows iPhone developers to easily include Google Map data directly into their own apps. However, earlier this year Apple bought a small startup that created its own Google Maps competitor. The purchase may be a sign that growing competition between the two companies—which resulted in the recent resignation of Schmidt from Apple's board—could be causing a rift in the once-friendly alliance.

Apple bought online mapping company Placebase in July of this year. The only source of the information at the time was a tweet from a company that used Placebase's PushPin API, noting the deal was "all hush hush." Though Apple made no public announcement, the purchase was confirmed yesterday when Computerworld noticed that founder and CEO Jaron Waldman listed his current position as working in the "Geo Team" at Apple. Furthermore, websites for both Placebase and the PushPin API now just redirect to documentation for the API.

Location-based services have become a killer use for smartphones with integrated GPS hardware, and Apple has been at the forefront of enabling these services for its iPhone by providing the CoreLocation API for iPhone OS. Developers can use CoreLocation to provide location-sensitive information, such as nearby restaurants in Yelp, or nearby tweets in Tweetie. CoreLocation has also migrated to the desktop, allowing Snow Leopard users to set their timezone based on location data.

When geo-location data needs to be visualized, however, Google Maps has been the go-to source for mapping data. It's in the Maps application on the iPhone, in the mapping API Apple provides to developers, and in the Places feature in iPhoto. The PushPin API offers richer data integration features than those currently offered by Google Maps, though what Apple might want to do with the additional power is anyone's guess at this point in time. It's worth noting, though, that PushPin won't replace the directions and Street View features currently provided by Google Maps.

The relationship between Google and Apple has been chilled somewhat as of late, particularly centered on the rejection of both Google Latitude and Google Voice apps from the App Store. The rejection of the latter has prompted an FCC investigation into the matter, which so far seems far from resolved. The FTC still has an ongoing investigation into possible collusion between the companies related to the continued presence of Arthur Levinson on the boards of both companies.

As Google continues to offer additional competition in spaces like mobile OS (Android), browser (Chrome), and even desktop OS (Chrome OS), though, Apple may just be hedging its bet by having a backup mapping technology that Placebase provides.

Further reading:

The programming-minded can take a look at the documentation for the PushPin API.

For a practical example of what can be done with the PushPin API, check out Policy Map and Openplaces.

Here is a video of Jaron Waldman demonstrating PushPin and the benefits of its RESTful design at the O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference last year.

29 Reader Comments

Cool! I usually use Google maps for quick and dirty directions and MS Live Maps (I assume rebranded as bing now) for better overhead images. A third contender should only help the field. I don't really count Mapquest as I haven't used it in years.

Also, this would make perfect sense if they're working on augmented reality for their next release, which I seem to remember being discussed (I remember OrangeCream mentioning it, but there may be additional rumors).

I wonder if they'll stick with Google search? Then again, it's tough to imagine them proudly announcing they're switching to Bing, either.

I don't understand why people think the iPhone is so tightly integrated with Google Maps. The iPhone just uses the Google Maps tiles and Street View. Do we even know if the route calculation is done on a server and not on the iPhone? Who's to say that all of this functionality will not remain intact when Apple switches to their own tiles (if that is even happening)?

Originally posted by Anita Man:Why do companies get involved with non-core areas? Why not just buy it from Google, ms, Mapquest et al?Mapping is central to many iphone services, but can they do it better than google?

I think you answered your own question there when you said that mapping is central to many iPhone services. Therefore, by definition it *is* core to Apple. The mapping data isn't, but the presentation and use of that data certainly is.

Also, it is not clear that it is Apple's best interests to be generating traffic for Google.

HA. Good luck on street view Apple. That is all the work of Google. See here's the deal. If this would cost Apple a crap load of money you know they will try and leech off of someone else's efforts. However they want quality maps. So they are pretty much stuck with only a handful of companies that don't suck hard. So most likely they will try and go to yahoo or mapquest. (They could by the maps from the source itself, however then you need to DO something with that data.) The idea that Apple would be willing to actually put real honest to god work into a project really doesn't compute with the "New Apple". That and reading about placebase suggests that they are, by and large, a company focused on integration vs. a pure vanilla based mapping company. Quote from the CEO “Google Maps is great for consumer usage, but we are making it easy for large companies to take our Maps API, customize it and then use it."

That may be part of Apple's strategy. And definately needed for a Google Map competitor, however my money is they are years away from a good product that could ever take on Google Maps or MapPoint and as such they are going to be going after another established player in the market. Its the way Apple rolls.

There is no way that this company has the clout of Google to capture data to the extent that Google does…did they even have a data service available, or where they an API that used other services? (Genuine question).

Google purchases a lot of data from a wide variety of vendors, and integrates it quite skilfully. Worldwide aerial imagery of the quality and currency that Google purchases cost a fortune. Apple could afford it, but it just doesn’t fit with what they’re about. I don’t think Apple wants to become a spatial company, and they don’t have an advertising platform to leverage (that’s how Google do it). Apple do, however, want to leverage location and spatial based services.

I suspect that Apple may have seen something in the talent at the company, as nothing that Pushpin has looks super innovative — I’m not they outplay Google in any area.

Re: a Google Maps competitor. Bing is good; along with MultiMap in the UK; and MapQuest isn’t too bad, but doesn’t seem to have the same level of innovation. Yahoo is also an option. Pushpin….never heard of them (and I do this day to day!).

The idea that Apple would be willing to actually put real honest to god work into a project really doesn't compute with the "New Apple".

webkit, grandcentral station, c blocks, opencl. all developed at apple, either from the ground-up or by significantly advancing existing open source material.

you may also want to check out sprout core. apple purchased that... i want to say 18 months ago. they've made huge headway in to the framework from where it was when purchased and its used quite extensively in the me.com web service

quote:

So they are pretty much stuck with only a handful of companies that don't suck hard. So most likely they will try and go to yahoo or mapquest. (They could by the maps from the source itself, however then you need to DO something with that data.)

yahoo, google, microsoft and mapquest all license their tiles from navteq, so does pushpin/placebase. you may want to take a look at the existing api structure to see that all the work as already been done. it doesn't as far as i can tell do directions, but who knows what they've come up with in the time between acquisition, but i'd doubt apple would be ready to an internal map system until that was ready.

Originally posted by siliconaddict:HA. Good luck on street view Apple. That is all the work of Google. See here's the deal. If this would cost Apple a crap load of money you know they will try and leech off of someone else's efforts. However they want quality maps. So they are pretty much stuck with only a handful of companies that don't suck hard. So most likely they will try and go to yahoo or mapquest. (They could by the maps from the source itself, however then you need to DO something with that data.) The idea that Apple would be willing to actually put real honest to god work into a project really doesn't compute with the "New Apple". That and reading about placebase suggests that they are, by and large, a company focused on integration vs. a pure vanilla based mapping company. Quote from the CEO “Google Maps is great for consumer usage, but we are making it easy for large companies to take our Maps API, customize it and then use it."

That may be part of Apple's strategy. And definately needed for a Google Map competitor, however my money is they are years away from a good product that could ever take on Google Maps or MapPoint and as such they are going to be going after another established player in the market. Its the way Apple rolls.

What a lame rant.

Mac OS X lacks a high-quality geoviewer, and Google's solutions on the Mac are weak. Google Earth is considerably slower and more crash-prone on OS X than on the PC. Virtual Earth and NASA World Wind aren't supported on the Mac either, and Google's Earth Mac 3D browser experience is clunky and slow.

As for "leeching", clearly you know little about global GIS and imagery datasets. Geographic datasets are content, and there are a number of content providers in both the public and private sectors: Digital Globe, Landsat, city and regional government councils to name a few. Producing content is not Apple's core business as others have commented. But Apple is a world class distributor of content, and if they could begin to unify and standardize the distribution for global geographic data, most users and even providers would benefit greatly. I'm sure Apple could negotiate licensing agreements for street-view and satellite imagery, as well as vector map data. Google may have paid for street-view images, but the actual capture was performed by various suppliers in different parts of the world. Apple has the know-how to negotiate and serve this content through iTunes - all that is lacking is a desktop or handheld client that works well for geographic data on the Mac.

On the client side, Apple could certainly make a major contribution to improve the user geographic experience on the Mac, and hopefully Windows as well, through a desktop client and browser-based solutions. I am hopeful that Apple develops not only in-house neogeography solutions, but eventually releases a professional application for GIS as well. ESRI and the other usual suspects were courted and captured by Microsoft over a decade ago.

I'm very hopeful that the rumored iTablet fits into this scheme, and that Apple's datacenter plans include geographic content as well as music and videos.

Originally posted by dashiel:yahoo, google, microsoft and mapquest all license their tiles from navteq, so does pushpin/placebase.

And Navteq is now owned by Nokia who have a pretty decent set of mapping apps on their phones (turn by turn directions and offline maps of entire regions unlike Google) and the web with Ovi Maps - http://maps.ovi.com

I would guess Apple are also looking at what Nokia are doing as much as Google.

Originally posted by dashiel:yahoo, google, microsoft and mapquest all license their tiles from navteq, so does pushpin/placebase.

And Navteq is now owned by Nokia who have a pretty decent set of mapping apps on their phones (turn by turn directions and offline maps of entire regions unlike Google) and the web with Ovi Maps - http://maps.ovi.com

I would guess Apple are also looking at what Nokia are doing as much as Google.

Umm, is that why it says copyright 2009 Tele Atlas in the Google map viewer?

Location-based services have become a killer use for smartphones with integrated GPS hardware, and Apple has been at the forefront of enabling these services for its iPhone by providing the CoreLocation API for iPhone OS.

Except for my pet peeve - not including Lat/Lon fields in Address Book (the same goes for Mac OS).

When setting a driving route to a new address, it would be great to simply pull that info out of Address Book, were it available. And before people jump in and say that typing in the street address does that for you, keep in mind that many real-world sites, such as anything off-road or specific points on large campuses, don't provide that option.

Originally posted by publius scipio:Umm, is that why it says copyright 2009 Tele Atlas in the Google map viewer?

And Tele Atlas isn't the only data provider.

The point still stands. The map data isn't from yahoo, google, microsoft or mapquest or even placebase. Apple have just cut out the middleman - Google - presumably so they can do what they want with data they can't get from Google.

Google used to use Navteq right up till Nokia bought them. TeleAtlas are owned by TomTom btw.

Originally posted by David Bradbury:Why doesn't Apple support OpenStreetMap instead?

Have you actually looked at the maps via OpenStreetMap? They suck.Their licensing isn't great either, although it isn't too bad.

It's a great project but still has far to go.

They could use OpenStreetMap's data and skin their own look like many others have. I would guess Apple either didn't like the licencing, or the fact that OSM (justifiably) refuses to use any data from commercial sources like NAVTEQ or TeleAtlas (which supply Google Maps' data).

Except for lacking turn-by-turn in the default iPhone maps app and also requiring a constant data connection, iPhone greatly exceeds my dedicated GPS unit in 2 major ways:1) it gets a "lock" on my position much quicker (because it's not relying strictly on GPS if it even uses GPS at first)

2) I may be wrong because I'm projecting maps.google.com functionality onto this app, but IF the routes and times are being done by google, then they are way more accurate than my standalone unit. google appears to be keeping track of traffic patterns and construction delays whereas my GPS unit doesn't (even the optional $60/year traffic subscription is limited to providing nearby delays and is not helpful in avoiding the delays, and most certainly isn't used to help plan big routes that go out of the current city's traffic-reporting area).

So, the bar is really high. I don't see Apple willingly abandoning its use of Google Maps App easily; augmenting would be another matter though. I have great attachment to the Maps app. As an early iPhone adopter it was one of the few compelling functions my iPhone had for about the first year that I owned it...

I'd really like to see "iPhone Maps.app 2.0" make one major change: instead of pulling down map tiles (raster images) as fast as possible, pull down _geography information_ that the client application knows how to render. The carriers would love this because it would use less bandwidth, and the users would like it because it would be faster* and zooming would be much smoother.

*this would depend on the phone's processing speed instead of its available network bandwidth.

Yeah well - next week Apple is going to buy a small start-up cell phone company so that it can ditch ATT (first) then gradually pahse out all other phone service providers it's partnered with around the world so as to reclaim it's global proprietary status.

Originally posted by David Bradbury:Why doesn't Apple support OpenStreetMap instead?

What we desperately need is a free iphone app accessing OSM database (which you can download locally). This alone would be useful and original, but then if in addition there was a possibility to record tracks (ie to update Openstreetmap easily) then indeed Openstreetmap would become powerful.And I for one would appreciate this kind of trick: develop the opensource-minded OSM thanks to the closed, but numerous, iphone ;-)